Much-hyped Canadian star, The Weeknd, begins his first UK tour today –
with a set of songs that turn R&B inside out, says Ben Thompson

If one were to compile a troubleshooting checklist for every aspect of the advent of a much-touted, new recording artist that might suggest a short shelf life, Toronto’s the Weeknd would score ominously highly.

In person, Tesfaye’s powerful physical presence is allied to a refreshingly sure grasp of how to inhabit a song so fully that it can colonise the minds of an audience long after he’s left the stage. And his plaintive falsetto vocal cuts through the loucheness of the musical backdrop like hot syrup through whipped cream.

The Weeknd’s stock-in-trade is to turn the time-honoured seduction rituals of the r&b ballad or “slow jam” inside out, leaving the listener feeling unsettled and vaguely in need of a bath. While this might not sound like a pleasurable experience, in live performance the sinister undercurrents at work in songs such as the forthcoming single Twenty Eight swirl and eddy into an unexpectedly affirmative flood.

On paper, lines like “I’m so wrong to let you in my home… Now you know where I sleep” would not seem to suggest a feelgood sing-a-long, but such a presumption reckons without the insatiable public appetite for communal expressions of individual alienation.

Following hot on the designer heels of Kanye West and Drake into the karaoke booth of ecstatic ennui, the Weeknd is already booking a follow-up arena tour before his first proper British tour has even begun.